Chechnya: Steps To Peace

By Andrew Bennett

Published: February 19, 2000

WASHINGTON—
With the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, Russia's military intervention in Chechnya has followed the script rehearsed in the war in the mid-1990's.

As in February 1995, Russian soldiers are picking over the ruins of Grozny, the Chechen capital, after a costly fight and are facing a vicious battle in the mountains of southern Chechnya. Russia must now decide if it wants to repeat the closing act of the previous war, when it rejected negotiations with the Chechens after taking Grozny. It only conceded to a peace agreement in 1997, after two years of guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks by Chechen rebels.

Negotiations would require both sides to take political risks and face down their hard-line factions. But there are good reasons to think that this time both sides may try to make a deal.

Vladimir Putin, Russia's acting president, is in a stronger position to seek negotiations than Boris Yeltsin was in 1995. Mr. Putin's ruthless offensive in Chechnya has won him much higher approval ratings than Mr. Yeltsin had after his ill-prepared assault on Grozny five years ago. Mr. Putin also knows that recent polls have shown that the Russian public's support for the war has softened as casualties have increased. And some Russian leaders, including Sergei Stepashin, a former prime minister, and Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow have begun to criticize the continued use of force in Chechnya.

The greatest risk to Mr. Putin's election as president next month is not a backlash from hard-liners for negotiating an agreement, but a terrorist attack or counteroffensive in Chechnya.

The Chechens, too, might be more likely to seek a truce this time around. President Aslan Maskhadov does not control all of Chechnya's factions. But he remains the republic's most legitimate leader, and he is far more reasonable that Dzhokhar Dudayev, the breakaway republic's leader five years ago. Mr. Maskhadov has never supported terrorist tactics, and has criticized radical Islamic leaders like Shamil Basayev. Last fall he even said that he might be willing to part with Mr. Basayev, but couldn't do so as long as he faced a Russian invasion.

It would be politically risky for either Mr. Putin or Mr. Maskhadov to be the first to seek a settlement. Thus the first tentative steps toward negotiations might depend on the unlikely person of Malik Saidullayev, a Chechen who made his fortune running Moscow's largest lottery. Mr. Saidullayev is the head of the Chechen state council, a shadow government appointed by Moscow, which is viewed by many of the republic's leaders as a puppet regime. But Mr. Saidullayev has established some credibility with the Chechen people by forcefully criticizing Russian atrocities in the recent offensive. Speculation is that he might make a legitimate intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Maskhadov.

It is clear what the outlines of any mutually acceptable agreement must be. Russia will demand security from Islamic terrorism, including a buffer zone in northern Chechnya manned by Russian troops. A new Chechen government would likely insist on autonomy for the rest of its territory, as well as reconstruction assistance from Moscow and possibily military help in getting rid of extremist holdouts.

And both sides would likely demand the expulsion of the hard-liners from Chechnya -- meaning not only Mr. Basayev and other warlords but also the most overeager of Russia's generals.

What can the United States do to tip the scales toward peace?

President Clinton has until now wisely avoided a confrontation over Chechnya. He has delayed several loans from the International Monetary Fund and the Export-Import Bank but has cited Russia's economic mismanagement and corruption as the reason rather than explicitly mentioning the war in Chechnya. Perhaps now is the time to inform Russia's leaders that American-backed loans will become inextricably linked to Chechnya if Russia fails to seek a settlement.

Andrew Bennett, a professor of government at Georgetown, is the author of ''Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism 1973-1996.''